[Cowardice? Opportunism? Callousness?] In Failing to Support Bradley Manning, Gay NGOs Betray Their Own Mission Statements and Fail to Promote an Inclusive Justice Agenda <\/i><\/p>\n
One of the signature traits of LGBT subculture in the United States is its adoration of celebrity.\u00a0 If a well-known person voices the most milk-toast notion that gays are human beings, let alone deserving of legal equality, banner headlines in the gay press are guaranteed.\u00a0 If the celebrity comes out as gay, even more effusive coverage is given.<\/p>\n
Any number of fading stars and starlets, and non-entities on the make, from Lady Gaga to Chaz Bono to Ricky Martin, have mined the LGBT community to support their careers. Our community\u2019s eager rush to embrace just about any celebrity who deigns to notice our existence is emblematic of our lack of self-esteem, our internalized homophobia.<\/p>\n
So why is it that all of the big gay non-profits, from the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) \u2013 \u201cGay Inc.\u201d \u2013 have failed to utter a word of support for Private Bradley Manning, let alone really campaign for him?\u00a0 He\u2019s gay, has moderately high name recognition, and unlike any number of air-head celebrities, he\u2019s actually done something to support social justice, rather than mined charitable causes for personal fame and fortune.<\/p>\n
Manning\u2019s contributions to human rights have been recounted frequently enough to require only a brief recitation here.\u00a0 He exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq<\/a> [2]<\/a> [3]<\/a> [4]<\/a> and Afghanistan<\/a>.\u00a0 His exposure<\/a> of the corruption of the oligarchy in Tunisia helped kick off the \u2018Arab Spring,\u2019 toppling U.S.-supported dictators around the region.<\/p>\n He exposed the Obama administration\u2019s support for the 2009 military coup in Honduras<\/a> [2]<\/a>, the first successful Latin American coup in a decade and half, that led to a wave of violence against LGBTs and others, making it the murder capital of the world.<\/p>\n The list goes on.\u00a0 No less an authority than Daniel Ellsberg, exposer of the Vietnam War era Pentagon Papers, has said Bradley Manning \u201cis a hero in my heart. He did what he should have done.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Besides the Honduran angle \u2013 89 LGBTs murdered over three and a half years in a country of less than 8 million, including leading activists like Walter Trochez and Erick Martinez Avila \u2013 there are other LGBT angles that NGLTF and HRC could have highlighted.\u00a0 The sexually humiliating torture that Manning received, stripped naked in a cell for days on end, ordered by no less than a two-star general \u2013 was tinged in homophobia, and yet where were the protests from the gay human rights groups? Not even a token press release.<\/p>\n If a homophobe had so much as broken Chaz Bono\u2019s finger nail, rest assured that assured GLAAD, NGLTF and HRC would have been on the case.\u00a0 But why the silence about Manning?<\/p>\n It\u2019s political cowardice. \u00a0A failure to take on \u201cdifficult\u201d political subjects, particularly when doing so might bite the (Democratic Party) hands that feed them.\u00a0\u00a0This same failure of political courage is why gay NGOs routinely fail to take on powerful anti-gay forces like the Mormon Church and Catholic Church leaderships, frequently allied with powerful local and national Democratic politicians, even when these religious leaders are pushing discriminatory referenda like Prop 8.\u00a0 Even when such failure spells defeat for gay rights (unlike back in the day when Harvey Milk, et al., took on Anita Bryant and the Briggs Amendment, and won<\/a>).<\/p>\n It\u2019s why they take a pass on opposing pink-washing of apartheid in Israel<\/a>, when they\u2019re not directly participating in it<\/a>, while the Obama administration funds Israel to the tune of a record $3 billion a year.\u00a0 And while they may whine about budget cuts that hit AIDS funding and other social services, you won\u2019t hear them denouncing the Obama administration\u2019s military spending (equal to the rest of the world\u2019s combined), let alone its wars from Yemen to North Africa to Afghanistan that drive it.<\/p>\n Bradley Manning\u2019s great sin, in the view of the gay NGOs, was in exposing not just the depravity of the Bush administration\u2019s foreign policy, but Barack Obama\u2019s as well.\u00a0 The fact that it is Obama\u2019s Justice Department that is prosecuting Manning makes it so much the worse. That his Justice Department has prosecuted more whistle-blowers than the combined total of every President who preceded him is a particular embarrassment.<\/p>\n Since the late 1970s, gay NGOs have effectively acted as an adjunct of the Democratic Party, which is why they were \u201cshocked, shocked\u201d when Bill Clinton gave us \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d and the Defense of Marriage Act.\u00a0 One would never know from Gay Inc\u2019s pronouncements that the two biggest legislative attacks on gay rights of the last century were undertaken and vigorously defended by Democrats.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, Gay Inc. sees its source of jobs in Democratic administrations, its executive directorships with six-figure salaries, its charity balls and other celebrity-driven hoopla as more important than gay rights.\u00a0 And when individual LGBTs like Bradley Manning through their own courage expose the human rights fakery of Democratic politicians, they can twist in the wind.<\/p>\n Just as much of the anti-war movement was \u201canti-war\u201d only when a Republican president was leading the wars, much of the gay movement is pro-gay only when it\u2019s non-Democrats who are anti-gay.<\/p>\n The Obama administration is leading the attack on the most important whistle-blower of our era, a gay man whose persecution was tinged with homophobia.\u00a0 The Honduran coup, which it supported and Manning helped expose, is murdering LGBTs and others at a horrific rate.\u00a0 While Gay Inc. keeps quiet, while lapping up favors from its political allies, we must not.<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n Andy Thayer<\/i> is a co-founder of the Chicago-based Gay Liberation Network<\/a>.\u00a0 He can be reached at LGBTliberation@aol.com<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n